Previews

Grand Theft Auto IV

As Niko arrives in the South Algonquin Seaport, we get to see an exchange between Niko and McReary. Besides the mission for the law firm, Niko will also have to go to the Humboldt River port, where a thief has stolen evidence that could get McReary in very hot water. Niko hops into another taxi and heads over to make contact with the thief. He calls McReary and gets the thief's cell phone number texted over to him. Niko calls him, and, we discover, you'll have to stall him by talking while looking around for someone talking on a cell phone. After Niko hangs up, you'll have to look for someone hanging up his phone. After he hangs up, Niko walks over, pops two rounds into the thief's face, takes the memory stick with incriminating evidence, and starts hightailing it out of the area. Before we get into the details of the new police chase mechanics, it's worth noting that this encounter was our first with seeing GTA IV's violence. Rockstar PR mentioned that the team has been working hard on recreating the same jarring effect that we all felt when we saw a shooting for the first time in GTA3. We think they've succeeded so far.

In the past, it was much easier to evade police presence around whatever city you were in. Now, you'll have a much more sweeping scope and a stronger sense of cat and mouse dynamics. As we put in our notes, "search radius = GTFO." The radar has more detail in regard to information now. You'll have red and blue lights representing the search. The red lights equal the police sweep at the place where Niko was last seen committing a crime, and blue lights are the police search of the surrounding area. It's all rooted in line of sight. That also means that if another cop spots him, the search radius resets to Niko's current location. There are swirling dots on the radius that represent police cars. Niko will have to steer clear of them as well; if any of them spot him, they'll call police dispatch and re-route the cops in his direction.

However, during this chase, our demoer decided to steal a car to get away, and while the animation took a while, once he was able to get Niko away from the police, we got a chance to see how the camera has changed in regard to driving mechanics. The camera leans to the left more, to correspond with American driving, and it's closer to both the car and the ground. As a result, Rockstar claims, the Rockstar North team has managed to recreate the same sense of wide-open space that anyone who's driven south on 5th Avenue through Manhattan has seen: the Liberty City equivalent has a clear path from its version of 5th Ave all the way down through the southernmost point of Algonquin. Seeing it with our own eyes, we'd say that they've done an admirable job.

At that point, Niko gets back to McReary at the meeting spot (Rockstar North is still debating whether or not to use the yellow cone icon that indicates a mission point), drops off the memory stick, and gets a reminder that he's got a job interview. With that, he cabs it over to Perseus, a clothing store, to buy a suit. A trip to the clothing store is not going to be the same as it was in San Andreas, however. The level of customization that gamers had with CJ won't be in this game. Niko won't be able to get too fat, too skinny, or too muscular. With the current game engine, physics, and Natural Motion animations (which affect everything from the way Niko bobs his head as he runs to his steps when he turns), playing with weight would throw everything off-kilter. Plus, with GTA IV's more serious turn, wacky character customization won't be happening here. Instead, he picks up a $2000 chocolate brown suit, $200 shoes, and hops into a cab.